Just listening to the Jack Johnson song, Where have the good people gone? and I realized what’s been bugging me all day.
Ever since I read that friggin’ David Coon call for a lynch mob today.
I mean look it, we can agree to disagree. We can have strongly held beliefs. I don’t even have a problem writing your MLA with Coon’s form letter.
No, what’s been bugging me is this one line from his call to action:
Contact the developer and their real estate agent and tell them that their development project “Quintessential Canada” is not wanted here.
It is just incredibly hard for me to envision New Brunswickers, particularly rural New Brunswickers from Portage Vale calling up a stranger in Ireland and telling them they are “not wanted here”. Somehow that irks me to the bone.
You want my view of rural New Brunswickers?
Rural New Brunswickers are the type to help you in a jam. To go out of their way to be nice. Like when you nearly get mauled by a bear out behind Bettsburg and have to run five miles to the nearest house at 1 am only to have the guy in that house take you in and calm you down and make you a cup of tea.
Rural New Brunswickers are the type to all get together to rebuild a burned down home.
Rural New Brunswickers are the type to see you by the side of the road and stop to help you fix a flat tire.
I just can’t picture hordes of rural New Brunswickers calling Ireland and telling perfect strangers to keep away from our province.
I know this is a silly post but it has been bugging me and I have to get it off my chest.
The idea of David Coon and his gang of dewey eyed teenage dragon slayers – pimply kids looking for a cause – inciting the decent people of rural New Brunswick to be downright nasty – just annoys me to the core.
That’s not my New Brunswick.
All over a small, quiet residential development. Not over LNG. Not over refineries or incinerators. Over a residential development that would have brought jobs – at least some good paying jobs – to an area that could use some.
Jack Johnson is right. Where have the good people gone?
P.S. – all those things mentioned above have happened to me in rural New Brunswick.